August Bullet Journal Spreads!

I don't know about anybody else, but I swear July never even happened. How is it almost over? Honestly, our July wasn't great. We still managed to get plenty of fun in there, but there were a lot of bad days with illnesses, poison ivy, and car troubles. No wonder it went by in such a blur. Normally, it's my favorite month of the year, but right now I'm feeling ready for a fresh start (and also really excited about starting school again!) so bring on August!

I got to sit down when I had breaks in my day yesterday and today to do my bullet journal spreads for the upcoming month! It's been almost two years now that I've been 'bullet journaling' and I keep waiting for a month where I'm kinda over it and don't do my pages, but it hasn't happened yet! I look forward to and love the days at the end of one month when I sit down and get ready for the new month! I shared back in January what a bullet journal is and how I set mine up for the year. You can find that here. But today I just wanted to share what my pages for August ended up looking like! I've tweaked things here and there since I shared pictures last and I know lots of people are always curious to peek inside bullet journals, so here you go!

This is the first year I've done a habit tracker and I love it so much. Often by the end of the month I'm not great at keeping up with actually filling in the little square (sometimes I am, but there have been months that I'm not), but just knowing this list exists helps me stay on top of these things!

My cleaning schedule tracker is different now than it was in January. What I had been doing before just looked cluttered and wasn't helpful. This tracker (and the schedule itself!) is working great! Our budget page stays the same. It's just the best way I've found to 'Dave Ramsey' the way James gets paychecks.

Monthly menu and shopping list has stayed the same. I started the year though just using the shopping list page to write out the things I needed for the dinners I had written on the menu. I now put my whole list on this page, not just dinners, because it makes it easier to write out into an organized way in the smaller notebook I take grocery shopping.

Monthly calendar pages still the same. Love this layout, especially the spot for future planning since I don't always have the next month's pages done to jot down events as they come up. This works great for me.

2nd or 3rd incarnation of weekly spreads this year and I think I've finally found 'the one'. I like how simple it is and that the whole week is one page, but I have plenty of room to fill in each days' tasks.

And just some fun pages to show how I also keep other types of lists in here, as needed 🙂 I never make these kinds of pages very fancy, just a little doodle or two if I feel like it. I usually end up with 2 or 3 list or planning pages like this at the end of each month's group of pages. I like doing it this way, rather than keeping my lists grouped together elsewhere (or just in a different notebook entirely) because the lists usually pertain to the specific month they're following after. 

And that's all folks! This all took maybe an hour, at the very most and was split up into little chunks of time here and there over 2 days. It's so enjoyable for me to do it that it doesn't ever feel like a lot of work so I wouldn't even mind if it took longer!

Hope this satisfied your curiosity if bullet journals are something that you're into! Happy Almost August!

'18/'19 School Plans!

I don't exactly know how it's already gotten to be time to talk about our plans for the upcoming school year, but here we are! We still won't start for a few weeks, but I've been getting all of my planning and organizing underway because 1- I love it and 2- I can enjoy the next several weeks of summer a whole lot more without school prep work hanging over my head!

So Sam is going into *2nd* grade. Doesn't that just sound so old? I remember 2nd grade so clearly! *Insert every cliche about feeling old and how fast time is moving here*, but I'm so excited for this year with him! His reading has really taken off in the last 6 months and this school year is going to be a whole different ballgame! We will be continuing to implement Charlotte Mason's methods and will continue to use AmblesideOnline as our main curriculum. This year Sam will be in year 2.

Kate will technically be going into Kindergarten, but we do not do much formal schooling prior to 1st grade. The 2nd half of last year she was becoming more interested in sit down schoolwork, and she's been chomping at the bit to learn to read so I may structure her days some more later on, possibly after Christmas. For now, she and Henry will be listening in when they want and I'll have my usual preschool/kindergarten activities to pull out when they want to 'do school'. For more on how we homeschool preschool, go here.

In year 2, we'll be continuing with some books from last year, mostly for history, as well as adding in some new titles. Here's our book stack!

I didn't include any of the "free read" selections from the book list, but I am very excited to track Sam's free reading this year with how much he reads on his own now!

In addition to our daily readings, each of which will be orally narrated (or sometimes drawn and orally narrated) back to me, each day we'll have: math, copywork, Bible, memory work, poetry, reading, drill, and French. Weekly we'll have: hymn study, folk song, composer study, art study, drawing, nature study, geography, handicrafts, timeline, and piano. Depending on how piano goes, that might change to daily or every other day. A month or so into the year we will be adding cursive practice in with regular copywork.

Since Sam can read fluently, we don't really need to a reading program. I have this book, Discover Reading, which guides teaching reading the way Charlotte Mason did in her schools, and I might do some of the activities from the end of it with Sam, but he's mostly beyond all of it now. Reading out loud at least part of one of his readings each day, plus the 10 minutes of free reading out loud he already does daily will be his reading "curriculum". We are happy still staying a year "behind" with Horizons math since it seems to be a fairly accelerated program. Handwriting Without Tears will be what we use for cursive writing instruction. The Pictures in Cursive book is just extra because I really liked it 😉

Last year I feel like one area in which we were really lacking was our nature study. So this year, in an attempt to be more intentional, we'll be using Exploring Nature with Children by Lynn Seddon. It references the Handbook included in our AO curriculum so it's a great fit! I'm very excited! This will be for everybody, not just Sam!

We'll be learning French without a set program. Last year we were slowly compiling a list of French words that we knew, reviewing them all at lunchtime and adding a new one every now and then. We also started reading an English/French picture book which everybody loved! This year we'll be continuing all of that, plus reading more French picture books, and listening to French stories and fables on YouTube. As we get better, we'll work at translating what we listen to together and I will ask Sam for short, simple narrations in French after listening. 

Ambleside Online provides a scheduled art study for each school year. We study 6 pieces by 1 artist per term and spend 2 weeks on each piece. This year I compiled them all into a photo book. Our art study is still very simple. We'll look at that week's picture and talk about it. The 2nd week I'll give them a couple minutes to look at it, and then take it away and ask them to describe it to me. I'll usually read a short bio of the artist as well.

For memory work this year, we'll be using the memory box method found here on Simply Charlotte Mason. This will involve everybody because we do memory work over breakfast.

For recitation, Sam will have a Psalm, 6 verses from the Old Testament, 6 verses from the New Testament, a poem of his choosing, and a hymn per term to read out loud to all of us. The goal isn't to memorize, but a lot of it will likely end up memorized! He will recite just once a week for about 5-10 minutes, so he won't recite all of these each week.

For year 2, we study one poet per term and the poems for each term are available on the website. I printed them out and put them in a report cover just to make life a little easier. We do our scheduled poetry reading over breakfast.

We are still working on a personal timeline, to gain a better understanding of the passing of time, but we may also begin a simple history timeline part of the way through the year. In the later years of this curriculum, we will keep a detailed history timeline and later a book of centuries, but we won't take on this huge project just yet. We had fun starting Sam's personal timeline last year! I'm thinking around Christmastime (or earlier depending on how the year is going) I will put a fold out timeline in this section of Sam's binder so we can start entering some names and dates from our readings here and there.

I will continue to write out selections from our readings or poetry in Sam's binder for his copywork. His handwriting improved tremendously last year doing copywork and I'm looking forward to seeing how this year goes!

We will listen to a different hymn and folk song each month. Everybody really loved the folk songs especially last year. We don't do anything special with this, just listen. Sometimes some of them like to dance while they listen, sometimes we just sit quietly and listen, sometimes we listen while doing other work, sometimes while eating. The folk songs are pretty easy to pick up over the course of the month, so we're usually singing along eventually!

AO provides a scheduled composer study similar to the art study. We study 6 pieces by 1 composer each term, 2 weeks per piece. I usually read the composer's bio and we just listen at some point during our day. If I can find a video on YouTube of the piece actually being played we definitely watch that!

Handicrafts is another area I felt we needed to beef up this year. Finger knitting and soap carving are 2 high on our list this year. We'll also be trying our hands at paper sloyd using this free e-book. Sam is mostly excited to learn to fold paper into an envelope.

We have a geography reading once a week and we'll also be working on filling in several blank maps I've printed.

For piano we're going to be doing free online lessons with Hoffman Academy. We don't have a piano so the frequency of this will depend on how often we can use my parents' piano or if we get our own piano (or, more likely, keyboard). Just Sam will be learning to play piano, but everybody will be doing some singing lessons following the Children of the Open Air channel on YouTube.

For drawing I'll be getting Sam another Dover drawing book. He really loved the one he used last year. His drawing skills improved a ton and it absolutely helped his handwriting as well. I also want him to start some brush drawing instruction. YouTube has some great tutorials.

Drill is new for us this year. Charlotte Mason used Swedish Drill in her schools for both phys. ed. and cultivating the habit of attention. It's basically more structured Simon Says using movements that improve gross motor skills. It looks so fun. This blog has been really helpful figuring it all out!

Reading over everything I've just typed makes me realize this probably comes off as looking like a lot of work and very overwhelming! I feel like now is a good time to drop the reminder that Charlotte Mason advocated for nice, short lessons at this stage. This curriculum is very rich and full, but it isn't time consuming!

I take the term schedules from the Ambleside site and put them into my own, weekly schedules. I tweaked the template I used last year a bit.

Before starting a new term I sit down with this and input the readings for each week, as well as the scheduled hymn, folk song, art study, etc. and print the whole term (so, 12 weeks) to keep in my binder.

So that's Sam! Like I said earlier, Kate won't really being doing anything formal, but she will end up being a part of so much of Sam's work! I will also be intentionally reading quality books to her and to Henry (using the "year 0" booklist on the Ambleside site, as well as the books in our copy of "Before Five in a Row"), and we'll be starting at the beginning of Discover Reading. She already has a good grasp on a lot of basic math just from life, but I may begin the Horizons K book with her in the spring if she seems to want to.

Bits of our K and preschool "plan". I bought both Kate and Henry their own dry erase board this year. I use one to write important names or details when I'm reading to Sam, to help with his narration, and everybody always fights over it when I'm finished. So now Henry and Kate can scribble away on their own boards and not fight over mine!

All of our school stuff is still kept in what used to be our front coat closet, away from little hands 😉 I still use our 3 tiered rolling cart to hold the books and supplies we use most, but it still isn't safe for it to be left out although now that's less because of Henry and more because of Anna! 

The white shelf holds some free reads, nature journals, field guides, and some little art kits.

Construction paper in the front magazine holder, easily accessible for whenever anybody wants to draw a picture. Behind the nature treasures box is a crate holding paints and colored pencils, another crate with the zippered pouches that have little fine motor games for my preschoolers, and then coloring and sticker books. Above that are reference books, books for future school years, our binders, and the drawers have index cards, stickers, brads, staples, etc. The shelf above that has my two bins for sensory activities. One bin of tools (tongs, scoops, cups, etc) and one bin of materials (beans, pom poms, popsicle sticks, beads, etc)

Math manipulatives on the bottom, all of our books currently being used in the middle, mishmash of frequently used supplies on top.

Flash cards, early readers, glue, scissors, writing utensils. I keep things in jars so I can easily just grab a jar and take it to the desk with me.

This is in our dining room. In the basket to the right I keep my Bible, our kids devotional, and poetry books since that's all reading that we do during breakfast. I'll put our scripture memory box here when it is finished as well.

And that's our plan! Of course it will evolve and shift a lot over the coming months, but I feel confident that the bones of it will work great for us and will stay as is. I feel so incredibly blessed to be able to do this. It is a privilege to get to stay home with my kids and do this, a privilege that I am very grateful for!

Once a Reader...

I know we aren't even halfway through this year, but I'm going to go ahead and claim 2018 as 'The Year I Re-Discovered Reading". I've already written about the reading challenge I'm doing this year, and how a big goal of mine for this year has been to read more and to read better quality books. It's honestly going a million times better than I had ever hoped. I set the goal hoping it would help me make my limited downtime more purposeful and to set a good example for my kids (especially Sam as his reading is becoming more and more fluent). What I didn't expect when setting this goal for myself, was that I was going to rediscover a part of me that I had lost, an unfortunate casualty of motherhood. I discovered the part of me that had always identified as a "reader".

Books have always been just as much a part of my life as family members. All of my memories include books in some way. My earliest memory, watching my brother Billy's birth when I was 4 years old, includes the memory of sitting on a worn birth center couch being read to while my mom was in labor. Without any effort, I can hear my dad's voice changing for each character as he read Berenstein Bear books to us in one of the boys' beds before we went to sleep, my mom's voice reading Harry Potter to us in their bed.

I remember the absolute thrill I felt when I finished reading my first chapter book all on my own (Little House on the Prairie). I remember book reports in school, before we started homeschooling. One year we gave oral presentations of a book we chose ourselves and got to bring in a snack to go with it. I read Listen to the Nightingale and brought iced tea and tea sandwiches. One of my classmates (I don't remember who) read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe and brought in Turkish Delight.

When I was 13, my mom and I flew out to San Fransisco to visit my aunt, uncle, and brand new baby cousin. My biggest memory of my first plane ride was that I was reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire which I had purchased with my own babysitting money when it was released at a big midnight party shortly before leaving for our trip. I remember finishing it on the plane ride home and gasping so loud when I read about Lord Voldemort returning that my mom jumped and asked me if I was ok. I told her I needed her to hurry up and read the book so that we could talk about it.

When we started going to the beach in Lewes every summer, my favorite part was re-reading The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (a tradition) and then diving into a huge stack of library books. "Go to the library" always topped my mom's to do list when getting ready to leave for vacation.

One Christmas Eve I decided to stay up almost the whole night and read most of Little Women. I was a little bleary eyed the next morning, but it was worth it. I had just really wanted to spend Christmas with the March sisters.

My first summer ballet intensive (Washington, DC 2003) was so memorable in so many ways, but a big one was that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was released right before I went away and it was on the top of the big pile of books I had packed. Several other dancers were reading it and a friend and I made sure to read it around the same pace, meaning we both learned of Sirius Black's fate on the same day and could comfort each other. 2 years later, at a summer intensive in Carlisle, PA I was reading the just released Half Blood Prince and finished the day before a friend, which meant I needed no explanation when she came bursting into my room sobbing with the book in her hand.

I remember in high school, the Language Arts curriculum my mom had me using introduced me to Emily Dickinson's poetry and from there I went through a phase of reading a lot of YA books written in verse. Some of better quality than others. One of my high school years I read Jane Austen's Emma and it made it's way onto my favorite books of all time list. I remember sitting in my loft bed (where I ended up doing most of my schoolwork a lot of days) actually eager to do my Language Arts because answering the questions felt like talking to somebody about the book I had loved, and who doesn't love discussing a book you really enjoyed?!

When I graduated high school and moved to Annapolis to dance, I had a part time job in a coffee shop/book store and it took incredible amounts of willpower not to blow my entire paycheck on books. As it was, I often went home with a few.

During a dark period in my early 20s, when a boyfriend had broken my heart, I hurried home from dancing and teaching every evening to read for hours. I read really sad books that helped me escape my own feelings. It felt oddly nice to cry for other people instead of myself for a change. (Said boyfriend is now my husband, so this memory has a happy ending!)

When James and I first got married, our combined libraries made up most of our moving boxes. In our tiny apartment, and with our meager budget, we made displaying every single book on a bookshelf a priority. An entire wall of our living room in that apartment (and the one we moved to a year and a half later) was filled with books.

The first summer we were married, I was often alone, since James spent most of that summer in the field. Once I got over my initial terror over driving on base, I went weekly to the library, and spent my days sitting by the pool, devouring everything by Emily Giffin and big stacks of other novels.

Taking the train home to PA to get ready for our 2nd wedding, a week ahead of James, I plowed through most of The Biography of Henry VIII, one of the longest books I'd ever read (and one of my favorites).

When I found out I was pregnant with Sam, I called my mom and when she asked what I was up to that day, I said, "Oh, just on my way to Barnes and Noble to buy some pregnancy books." by way of sharing the news. Immediately beginning to read every pregnancy book I could get my hands on was my very first instinct when I saw the positive test.

But then came babies. After Sam was born, I struggled to find time to read. There seemed to be so much else to do and we were having too much trouble figuring out the nursing thing for me to be able to read and nurse at the same time. As he got older, I seemed to have more time, but that quickly reading had ceased to be a habit and books were no longer my constant companions. Through the next few years of motherhood, I still read, and certain memories are still tied with books (When we moved to our house on base, while I was pregnant with Kate, I remember reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society on a camp chair in our mostly empty house, waiting for the moving truck to arrive), but I wasn't reading nearly as much as I always had before and long stretches of time would go by where I didn't finish a single book.

I honestly didn't notice it for a while. There were just so many other things going on in my life. I'd still mention reading any time I was asked what my hobbies were. I still went to the library a lot, mostly to check out children's books, but only ever checked out 1 or 2 for myself. I read daily to my kids, we still had big bookshelves in our living room. Eventually though, I started to realize how little I was actually reading. And when I realized that, I realized something else. I missed it. I missed reading so much. I missed being able to lose myself in a book and I missed becoming invested in characters lives. I missed that little break from your own life that reading gives you.

Missing it wasn't enough to get back to where I had been though. It was enough to make an effort here and there, but after spurts of reading a small stack of books, I'd go back to rarely picking one up.

I had all the excuses. "I'm too busy.", "I'm too tired.", "My kids won't let me just sit down and read." Then I started to realize I was full of crap. I remember my mom telling me that everybody has time to read, but that it's all about how you prioritize your time. I also remember brushing that off and insisting that, no. Really. I had no time to read. Eventually, I realized my mom was right and I should have listened to her sooner (about this and about a million other things 😉 Love you mom!) I thought back to my own childhood and remembered her reading while she ate, while she cooked, at red lights... Everybody has time to read.

Many factors went into my decision to make reading a priority again, but chief among them was definitely the homeschooling curriculum we have been using this year. I've spent this whole school year (we only have 2.5 weeks left!!!!) reading so many really awesome books to my kids out loud and it has been such a wonderful reminder of the power of words! Along with that, watching Sam read better and better, and seeing him go through piles of books on his own has made me think about how much I loved books and reading as a kid, how excited I am for him to meet all of the characters I remember and still love, and how much I want to raise readers.

Now I feel like I'm 'back'. Like I can, once again, really for real be classified as a 'reader'. I stay up too late sometimes and neglect other things I should be doing sometimes (breakfast was a tad late this morning because I just had to finish the last chapter of Unbroken). I didn't realize just how much I missed this part of myself until I started finding it again, and I am so, so very glad that I did.

How We Homeschool Preschool

As a homeschooler, I answer a lot of questions from friends, family, acquaintances, and even strangers in the grocery store. It's different than what most people are used to so there is naturally a lot of curiosity. And I love it. I love answering each and every question I'm asked. No matter who is asking or how many times I've answered the same question. I just love it. So, if you're somebody who has always had a question (or several) about homeschooling, ask me. I would be so happy to answer!

One question I get more often than most others, and this is probably just because this is sort of just my demographic right now, is, "How do you homeschool preschool?". Or, "What do you do with toddlers for school?". My answer has really evolved since Sam was 3 years old and I first started "homeschooling". Life has changed since then, but also my general homeschooling philosophy has changed a ton. It has happened bit by bit as I figured out what worked best for us, but it made a huge shift in the middle of last year when I was newly pregnant with Anna, feeling miserable, and way burnt out only doing Kindergarten. You can read more about that here, but basically I discovered and started researching a few styles of teaching that advocated for no formal learning before age 6. Already feeling stressed about mixing a 1st grade and pre-k year while also bringing home another baby, I took that and ran with it.

So, the short answer to, "How do you homsechool preschool?" is simply, "We don't." There are, however, plenty of things that I do intentionally do for the good of all my children really that could probably, for lack of a better term, be called our preschool "curriculum".

Quality children's literature.
We own tons of kids picture books and also try to get to the library at least once a month. Since discovering Charlotte Mason, I'm more careful about the quality of the books that we buy or check out of the library. I've heard other Charlotte Mason homeschoolers compare books to junk food or healthy food. Junk is fine in moderation, as long as you're maintaining a healthy diet otherwise. For our "healthy" books I look for beautiful illustrations, and good vocabulary. If I've learned nothing else from doing Charlotte Mason homeschooling this year, it's that children are far more capable of understanding a much wider vocabulary than we give them credit for. You can't go wrong with classics from authors like Robert McCloskey, Eric Carle, Jan Brett, and Ezra Jack Keats.

Outside time.
Some days this is harder than others, but we do our best. Sam and Kate are old enough at 6 and 4 to go out in the backyard by themselves, as long as they stay where I can easily see them out the back windows and stay out of the cornfields and front yard (we live on a back road, which means there are plenty of people who go flying by, well over the speed limit, so no front yard playing for us). That makes it easier because I can't always be outside, but I do make an effort to get Henry and Anna out there as much as I can too. Walks outside are good for everybody and provide endless learning opportunities for preschoolers (and everybody else!) We have nature journals and some field guides, and Sam does a little bit more of a structured nature study, but for preschool Kate is just exploring and I answer her questions if she has any.

Cooking and baking.
Again, endless learning opportunities without having to do anything special at all. I don't make baking a "lesson" at all, everybody just pulls a chair up to the counter and takes turns adding ingredients. They end up learning to count, seeing kind of how fractions work, learning what sorts of things need to work together to make food, what happens to certain things when they get hot or cold (like how water can boil and turn to steam or it can freeze and turn to ice). I have to cook anyway, why not let them help and learn without actually doing any planning or lessons right?

Music.
Our first grade curriculum includes monthly folk songs and hymns as well as composer studies. The little ones listen along to those and I also play a variety of music all throughout our days. Again, no lesson planning, but sometimes Kate has questions and I answer them. "This sounds different than the other one, why?" "Well the last one was a string quartet and this one is a piano solo." "What does quartet mean?" "4" "Okay." Just by playing a ton of music every day (a habit I started back when Sam was a toddler) I've noticed that Kate has a really good ear for music and picks up the emotions in different pieces. When she was 2 I was playing Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet and she said, "Mama, dis so sad." Sam is more likely to notice the volume of a particular piece and likes to pick out different instruments. Henry is already really good at catching the rhythm of whatever we're listening to and clapping or dancing fairly close to on beat. I love seeing all of the different ways they all hear and react to music! We also sing a lot of your usual preschool songs (and everybody really loves the 'days of the week' song!), but, in keeping with Charlotte Mason's philosophy, we really focus on quality! I think music is so important in any school at any age, but besides that, its very helpful at 'that' time of day before dinner and bedtime. I can have a little control over everybody's moods (mine included!) with the music I choose to play.

Art.
Sam has a scheduled picture study and Kate and Henry both like to look at whatever he's studying with him and play along when I cover it up and ask him to tell me what he remembers from it, but I don't make them. Sometimes they're not interested and obviously that's fine, since it's 1st grade work. I also don't plan or prep many crafts ahead of time for them. Drawing materials are always available and everybody is encouraged to use them. No formal drawing instruction or anything though. That, again, will start in first grade. Kate taught herself to draw flowers recently though copying out of a book about flowers that we have. I'm getting ready to teach Sam how to finger knit and I know that's something a 4 year old can easily do as well, so that will be a lesson where I will intentionally include Kate. Other handicrafts Sam has done, like yarn wrapped sticks and watercolors, Kate participates in if she wants to. She has her own pair of scissors that she is allowed to get out of the closet if she asks first, but I don't do planned "scissor skill" work or anything like that. Same with glue sticks, they're available (if they ask permission first) and they can glue whatever kind of creation they want to. So those are skills Kate has picked up on her own.

Life skills.
I think at the preschool age, it's just as important to teach life skills as it is to teach the alphabet. Sweeping, sink cleaning, vegetable and fruit washing, bed making, sock matching, drink pouring, snack making, and all things of that nature. This is all a little more in line with Maria Montessori than Charlotte Mason, although Ms. Mason was also an advocate for small children being able to do things for themselves. We don't do these things as lessons, I just make sure Kate learns the correct way to do them when they come up in life. Making her bed and cleaning the downstairs bathroom sink are her morning chores and she's getting pretty good at folding her extra blankets to lay at the foot of her bed!


In addition to all of these things that just happen in our daily life, I do have a few things put together that I can grab when Kate or Henry just have to do schoolwork like Sam. Or just when I need to occupy Henry long enough and quietly enough to get something accomplished with Sam. I have a bin of various beads, stones, beans, pom poms, pipe cleaners, etc and also a bin of little tongs, scoops, bowls, and cups. They can string beads on pipe cleaners, sort pom poms (or beads or beans or coins) by color or number into bowls or a muffin tin, pick up little things from one bowl with tongs and transfer them to another, all sorts of different little activities working their fine motor skills and keeping them fairly quiet. I cut up a bunch of cardboard rectangles and used glitter glue to write out the alphabet on them. They're fun (and pretty!) to play with and running their fingers over the bumpy, glittery letters is a pre-writing activity. Last year Kate had some matching games with laminated strips of paper and clothespins, but we haven't really gotten those out much this year. When Kate really wants to do school, we can do a ton with just one alphabet puzzle. She sings the ABCs, counts the letters, sorts them by color, traces them all with her finger, whatever she wants to do that satisfies her need to 'do school' that day. She also has a binder with laminated worksheets that she can work on with a dry erase marker, but we haven't used it in a couple months.

Something Charlotte Mason talks about a lot when she's discussing the 'early years' in her books is habit training. In most Charlotte Mason circles, when anybody asks what to do with the under 6 crowd, habit training, good books, and outside time are the top 3 answers. Habit training like attentiveness, obedience, orderliness, things you want your kids to know anyway, but you are just a little more intentional with it. For the habit of obedience we play red light green light or simon says. There are lots of ways to work on these habits through play (or schoolwork with older kids) and then they carry over into regular life as well.

So if the short answer to, "How do you homeschool preschool?" is, "We don't." the long answer would probably be that we don't really plan anything structured, but we make sure that the tools for good preschool learning are readily available. In addition to all of the things I've already talked about, we try to keep our playroom pretty 'open ended' (meaning little to no battery operated stuff) and our screen time minimal. I like to think that I'm giving Kate the tools to learn everything a preschooler should really be expected to know, and then letting her decide how and when to use them.

Every child learns differently. What works for one might not work at all for another, but this hands off approach can easily be tailored to different needs. Kate is not an especially self motivated learner. A big reason that we did attempt a more structured preschool with Sam was that he wanted to know all of the things and he wanted to know them immediately. I can see now though that he learned more and better when we stepped back from the structure and let him have more free reign. Even not being a very self motivated learned Kate has, in her own time, learned so much so far this school year. I was so nervous to be so hands off with her because she does tend to need more direction, but oh my goodness. She's flourishing! She is surprising me every day with things she is suddenly aware of and able to do. She learns at a very different pace than Sam, and different things click more easily for her than for him, but she's getting it all. Giving her the tools and the space to explore is giving her everything she needs. Today, for the first time, she got a piece of paper and copied the whole alphabet from our puzzle while I was doing a history reading with Sam. I was so proud and so relieved! It's hard to let go of your kids sometimes and let them figure things out on their own. That applies to schoolwork and a whole list of other things that I'm sure we're only in the extreme early stages of experiencing!

Preschoolers are amazing. And they are capable of so much more than we often give them credit for. They just need the space to do it!

I hope this post has answered some questions that I know many people have about homeschooling little ones and, like I said in the beginning of this post, I love homeschooling questions so please friends, never hesitate to ask!

What's Working and What's Not

We are 1 week into our third and final term of school for the year and, for the first time, I'm so happy with all of my choices and super excited to pick it all right back up again next year! This curriculum is just such a good fit for our family and I'm even seeing its positive impacts on my non-school aged littles. We all know toddlers and kids are little sponges, soaking up information all around them, and it has been incredibly amazing to see Kate and Henry soaking up all of the fantastic information being spread for Sam. How fun to hear your 2 year old count to 10 in French, unprompted, or to have your 4 year old tell you where the Saxons came from and what they did in ancient Britain!

As much as we are loving this curriculum and absolutely plan on using it for years to come, there are of course some little tweaks and adjustments to be made here and there moving forward. So today I'm sharing what has been really working well so far for us this year, as well as what hasn't.

What working: 4 day school weeks. The material we are scheduled to cover each week condenses well into 4 days and free days are nice to have, even though we get all of our work done fairly quickly on school days.

What's not working: Picking one day to always be our off day. At the beginning of the year I figured we'd just always take off on Thursdays since it tends to be our busiest day. That actually ended up feeling really restrictive and we homeschool specifically so we won't feel restricted by anything! Now I look at our schedule for the upcoming week and pick which day we'll take off, but sometimes I change my mind halfway through the week, and sometimes we actually just spread 4 days of work over 5 days. I don't even always chose our busiest day as our day off, occasionally we'll still do our scheduled schoolwork on a busy day, to give us a really quiet day at some point with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Flexibility. We love it.

What's not working: Morning being our only school time. This one kind of goes hand in hand with what I just said about our days off being flexible. At the start of the year I figured the day we were busiest in the morning would be the day we took off, since I didn't really want us to be doing school in the afternoon. I do still very much try and stay within our usual blocked schedule, but I've added schoolwork as a possibility into some of our later blocks.

What is working: Copywork and drawing upstairs during rest time, reading aloud to the little ones when I need a quiet minute, schoolwork in the lobby at ballet, schoolwork outside, reviewing word cards with me while I cook dinner. Again, flexibility.

What's not working: Trying to plan out activities ahead of time for Kate and Henry.

What is working: Flying by the seat of my pants, to be completely honest. Some days I tell them to go to the playroom and just play, some days I just toss a pencil and a piece of paper their way, some days I pull something from my bins of pre-school activities. A lot of days though they are both begging to "do school" and I've found I'm able to satisfy them with just our alphabet puzzle. We can cover letters, counting, and colors with just the one puzzle.

What's not working: Setting aside specific times for school readings. We started the year going to the couch to read, or reading while I nursed Anna. Life got busier as the year went on though and we needed to multitask more.

What is working: Reading during mealtimes (we had already been doing that from the beginning to some extent, now I'm just doing it more) and reading during clean up time. Reading to them while they clean up toys has been working really well. They focus on actually getting toys picked up rather than messing around when I'm in there with them and they focus on the reading because they're just cleaning and not playing. I've gotten some really good narrations from Sam during clean up and even Kate has chimed in with her own narrations sometimes.

What's not working: Picking and writing copywork each individual day.

What is working: Planning and writing out a full week of copywork on Sunday afternoons. I had planned to do this from the beginning of the year, but slacked off through the fall and into the holiday season and was trying to choose and write copywork every single morning. Doing it ahead of time in so much better especially because copywork is something Sam does pretty independently. He often does it in the morning after breakfast, while I'm doing dishes or dressing the little ones. On busy days he'll do it in his room during rest time. As long as it's coming back to me with nice, neat letter formation it doesn't matter to me where or when he does it.

There are also some things that I planned on doing from the beginning that we have continued doing all year because they're working extremely well. Namely: Bible, poetry, and prayers over breakfast and using toys to keep characters straight while reading Shakespeare.

Then there are also some things we've been doing a little, but that I want to do better or more consistently in this last term and next year. Nature study, for one. We do it, but not as consistently or as intentionally as I would like.

Handicrafts are something else I'd like to improve on. We've done a couple things here and there with great success and I'm really hoping that we can learn some new things and do them more often.

Yarn wrapped sticks were really fun and have really brightened up our dining room!

Something that my mom always did for us when we were homeschooling, that I'm hoping to carry on with my own family, was weekly poetry tea. It's also a very "Charlotte Mason-y" type of activity, but for whatever reason it hasn't been really high on my priority list. Probably has something to do with the whole having a newborn thing. 😉 We did manage to have our first poetry tea this past week and it was wonderful! Even Henry sat so nicely, carefully sipping his milky tea from a fragile tea cup and listening to me and Sam read poems out loud. I'm going to strive, for now, for poetry tea at least twice a month. When Anna's naps get more consistent we can try for once a week.

All in all, like I said before, I'm very pleased with how our year is going! We are managing to get all of our work done and still feeling very free and flexible, which is exactly what I was hoping for when planning this year. Sam is clearly learning so much and Kate and Henry are absorbing much more than I ever expected they would. I am looking forward now to finishing this year strong and am already doing some planning for next year!

2018 Reading Challenge

Last year, I sat down to make some goals for 2017, and came across Modern Mrs. Darcy's blog. She had a really fun looking reading challenge and I felt excited to try it! But then... morning sickness. Reading, unfortunately, makes my first trimester nausea markedly worse. Boo. I could have picked up the challenge halfway through the year when I was feeling better, but life happened and I didn't. I did read more last year than I had the previous couple years, but not a ton, and not many books worth remembering.

This year though! This year, top of my goals list is to read more and read better quality books. Top of my daily habits I want to maintain for 2018 is reading daily. So I am super excited to really dive into Modern Mrs. Darcy's 2018 Reading Challenge! I've already chosen most of my books, but still have some empty spaces, so please feel free to chime in with appropriate recommendations friends! Here is the challenge from the blog:

And here are my selections so far:

A classic I've been meaning to read: Catcher in the Rye by: J.D. Salinger

Recommended by someone with great taste:

A book in translation: Shadow of the Wind by: Carlos Ruiz Zafon

A book nominated for a 2018 award:

A book of poetry: The Sun and Her Flowers by: Rupi Kaur

A book you can read in 1 day:

A book over 500 pages: Gone With the Wind by: Margaret Mitchell

A book by your favorite author: Open House by: Elizabeth Berg

A book by an author of a different race than me: The Bluest Eye by: Toni Morrison

A memoir: Night by: Elie Weisel

A book recommended by a librarian or indie bookseller: 

A banned book: The Handmaid's Tale by: Margaret Atwood

I would like to (roughly) read one of these each month, hopefully making reading enough of a habit that I can sprinkle in plenty of other books in between! I decided to start strong with my pick for a book over 500 pages and I'm on track to finish that before the end of the month!

Because tracking things on paper keeps me motivated and I love my bullet journal so much, I've made some pages in there to keep track of my progress. One is to keep track of all the books I read this year, one as a reference to remember the books I've chosen, and one (so far) to track my progress on a specific book (I most likely won't do this for every book, but for a particularly long book like Gone With the Wind, it has been motivating!)

I am so excited for this challenge and I will be sharing my progress as I go! Please let me know if any of you decide to take on this challenge yourself! I would love to hear what everybody is planning on reading this year!